---

Introduction: The extent system leads to Broken queue, unbalanced teams, unfair behaviors from opponents

Hi all,

Tonight I was going for some battlegrounds - wanted to make some crystals and heard there were a nice daily reward here potentially to grab on every characters... was not disappointed : P

So lets be clear, since the first battlegrounds I did with Morrowind Chapter arrival in 2017, there are A LOT MORE of ARENAS, which are really nice btw, but rather nothing else has changed:

i. the queue was more or less broken with today's patch... 1/3 of my characters were able to reach an arena. Then, I got trapped in a famous 'Dead' arena where the match never started.

ii. The player behavior/differences in skills and build made it hard to enjoy the damn things.

Examples:
°Took your new pve stamplar? Found with 3 sympathetic but rather non-OP characters for a death-match, and start contemplating the 2 other teams fighting precisely at our spawning flag, and focus me - the highest CP of the team ofc... So, I got the records of deaths AND kills in my team...

°Took your old Lulamae-breathing-fire-dragonborn "bloodletter" butcher PvP DK? I found myself opposed to obviously beginners or chilling PvEers. To sum up: this are the kind of occasion some people await to unlock their 'paragon' title, but too me, after killing them again and again restlessly I started to feel embarrassed and I am not sure I enjoyed it that much... At the end.

I conclude from this (long) preamble that battlegrounds queuing system i. can be perfected and ii. that it is finally hard to have a lot of fun in a random battlegrounds - due to inequalities

---

Presentation of the ELO system - useful for ranking and matching

If the battleground random matching system has to be re-think, why not having some kind of ELO ranking system. ELO rankings are a type of rankings designed by Apard Elo and used by the FIDE to rank Chess players since the 60s. The basics is to have an initial baseline ELO score for each player, upgraded after each official match based on the strength of the player and its opponent, and the outcome of the match. Adapted to be applied to a battleground match - that is, for example, to take account of the share of the medals earn by a player over the sum of medals earned during the match (and eventually also the ELO scores of the participants themselves, but I won't discuss this to keep it understandable), could be very useful to both i. design an ELO score for battlegrounds, that will be much more representative of players skills than Cumulative medal scores on the extent leaderboard where top players simply farm points, and ii. to help with a matching based mostly on these ELO scores.

---

ELO rankings and matching - details of some options:

The basics of this ELO system would be the following:

1) The extent leaderboards and matching/queuing system would be replaced by leaderboards and a matching system based on ELO scores. The extent system of medals would be unchanged, and is at the very basis of the ELO score upgrade after a match, based on the share of medals obtained by a player compared to the sum of medals earned during this match, basically.

2) The ELO points would be character-based (to allow you to queue with a different character without risking your high ELO score to be damaged).

3) Each character that never entered a battlegrounds starts with some initial baseline ELO score (e.g., 1400 ELO). Then, this character's ELO score will NEVER be reset, but upgraded after each match. Nevertheless, for characters figuring on the leaderboard there would be a penalty for inactivity, for example simply a monthly decrease of the ELO scores of those characters.

4) The main difference between an ELO score and the extent score based on cumulated medals is that the ELO score would be upgraded after a match on the basis of your share of the medals earned during this match. Therefore, your number of medals (playing the game), your rank within your own team and your medals compared to the medals delivered to the other teams would determine your performance, leading to potential positive AS WELL as negative upgrade of your ELO score INSTEAD of having a score that is simply a cumulative addition of medals earned by yourselves match after match. This considerably reduces the importance of farming in reaching the top of the leaderboard.

Examples:
°Concretely, If you did the top job and earn a fair share of the medals during the match with a NEW character, your ELO score get pumped up.

°This increase of score is lower though if your ELO score is already high (ELO scores are saturating, typically for example around 2,500, preventing any later possibility of farming)

°If you did well in a match, but not much better than the others, then your ELO likely does not move at all...

°If you got a poor share of the total medals earned in a match, you are likely to experience a reduction of your ELO score. Once again, this reduction is larger for a high-scored character (and ELO are never reset - therefore, people aiming at reaching and keeping top scores should ALWAYS play fair, or they will be immediately punished by some heavy loss in ELO scores) than for a novice one (and there would be a point where, if you fall too far below the initial 1400 points, you cannot loose anymore points).

5) The matching system also would take account, when enough people are available, of the ELO scores to maximize the chances of balanced teams.

6) The leaderboard(s) would display the name of the 100 Characters with the highest ELO scores.

7) Eventually, we should get rid of the separate rankings for the different type of battlegrounds and should add a ranking for matches issuing from the solo-queue and matches issuing from the group one. That is, the outcome of matches you entered while queuing as a full group would not affect your character's ELO score on the solo leaderboard, and vice-versa. This implies each character can figure on both solo and group leaderboards, with different/independent ELO scores, on theory.

---

Why is this system thrilling?

°ELO scores are a fair and highly indicative way of scoring the 'strength' of people.

°The matching would be more than ever fair (opponents/team having balanced ELO scores), with reduced risk of people doing non-sense to boost their kill counters instead of playing the game and earning medals (as this would result in a decrease of their ELO scores), and allow you to solo-queue with any character without shivering...

°ELO scores rankings can lead to VERY COMPETITIVE battles at the top of the leaderboards, and every failed matches are severely punished for the top-players. Which is from far more exciting than endless farming races!

°Being permanent and character-based, ELO scores would imply more long term management for the challengers, instead of just taking holidays, playing a lot of bgs and finishing top 10... once.

°Despite they never reset, ELO scores will still potentially vary with every Patches and Skill changes, and with the arrival of new strong players at the top.

°There could be a reward system based on reaching diverse ELO scores' thresholds, with a lot of new rare achievements (like the 'Master' rank for 2ooo ELO in Chess), and other gifts...

SO: This new system would benefit the top players as well as any people aiming at a relaxed, balanced battleground match. ELO scores are more representative of the skill of a player than the farmed extent scores. And it would be a great way for people to check their rank in regards of other players to improve themselves, and to plan objectives for their different characters.

---

I've seen, and am sure there are plenty of other topics, made by more experiment PvPers than me, but I didn't find one as detailed, or at least not involving an ELO-like system, so I have to say I enjoyed starting this post; Please, if you think some topics already discussed all these issues, link these topics below.

I did not adapt/discussed in details the important features in the FIDE ELO rankings where the up-grade depends on the two players initial ELO score as well. This could be made. For example, if you solo-queued and end up against a team made of players being on the top of the leaderboard, earning few medals will not result in a huge drop of your ELO score as it was much lower than the ones of your opponents. This should also apply for falling in a team with much stronger allies, which made it much more complicated than for the matters of a Chess game...

Feel free to comment this suggestion about ELO scores, or ask your eventual questions too below - and sorry this post was rather very long!